Checking in with the Civic Center's new arena

RAPID CITY S.D. (KOTA TV) - After a year full of concept design, schematic design and design development, a whole lot of figuring out exactly where walls, pipes, and bricks will be, all the small details are complete.

Updates on the new arena at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center.

"The design part is sure taking a lot longer than I was hoping. I was hoping to be well into drawings now," says Craig Balzter the executive director with the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center.

Despite the slow design progress, crews are still on track to break ground in late October but with a bigger arena, comes more people and where will all those people park? That won't change until the Civic Center is completely at capacity.

"We would have to have additional lots and I'm talking about kind of a park and ride idea so we've already had some conversations with Central States Fair, Sioux Park, the mall, that maybe we make some arrangements with those folks, use their parking, and shuttle in from there," says Baltzer.

There has been talk about a new name for either the new arena or the entire civic center, or both but Baltzer can't confirm nor deny what route they're taking with the name change just yet.

"The company that's paying a lot of money to do this, I want them to be a part of the announcement I won't say who it's going to be and I won't give up too much on the deal at this point in time," says Baltzer.

Balzter and Civic Center staff will be at City Council on Monday to see if their current parking plan will get approved.

In the next 6-8 weeks the Civic Center staff plan to have their entire plan ready to give to the public for a more in depth update on the new arena.

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